MLB Tampa Bay

Few players have ridden a faster rocket to baseball fame than Evan Longoria. He was a near-household name before playing a major league game, he earned a long-term contract six days into his big league career and his All-Star worthy play has helped lift the Rays to the best record in baseball. Pretty good for the first chapter in a career and certainly a guy worth watching.

According to Dave Cameron at Fangraphs, he's a lot more than that. He's the single most valuable asset in all of baseball.

Yes, I know, he only has a half season of major league experience, and we have to be careful drawing too many conclusions from sample sizes that don't include more than 300 major league at-bats. However, the value of his abilities is so great, and his contract is so ridiculously awesome for Tampa, that the positives more than outweigh the negatives and make him the guy I wouldn't trade for any other one player in the game.

Longoria is signed through the age of 31 for a total payout of about $50 million. That's a superstar at rock bottom prices which makes it hard to imagine trading him for any other player, no matter how talented. I'd agree with Cameron, then, about Longoria's lofty status. Beyond that, unless another player with his skills signs such a team-friendly contract, Longoria should continue to be the top asset for some time to come.

If you aren't familiar with Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star (and his own excellent blog), then you should really take some time to rectify that. He's the best baseball writer going and his dispatch from a Sunday in Tampa is the latest reason why.

After the game, the Rays invite kids to run the bases and while they are impersonating Carl Crawford, the team plays baseball cartoons on the big screen. One of the cartoons is a homemade job which pits the brave Rays against the evil machinations of Dr. Stat.

But, believe it or not, that's not the hilarious part. No, the hilarious part is this: The villain they were trying to catch was someone named "Dr. Stat." No, really. It seems that Dr. Stat - and I'm quoting from the cartoon now - wants to "use his knowledge of useless statistics to destroy the game."

Yes, I'm completely serious here - I saw the thing twice. This Dr. Stat them (sic) appears on the Superfriends monitor, and he asks them who was the highest paid umpire in 1888. The Rays, of course, don't know, and they make it clear to him that it is a stupid and pointless question. Dr. Stat then says, "Wrong answer," and he says as punishment he will point his stat ray direction at Tropicana Field in order to make it impossible for people to enjoy the games.

You can watch the cartoon here and it's well worth your time.

Boy the Tampa Bay Rays have done a complete 180 this season, not only in their record, but now in their coolness factor. You would never think of the Rays as being a team to attract the celebrities before this season, and that's probably still the case, but they did have a celebrity in the owner's box on Thursday.

Comedian Chris Rock, who had a show at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Thursday, sat in the owner's box as a guest of the Rays.

"He was the first guy in line greeting us coming in," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "You go, 'Hey Chris,' bang," Maddon added, illustrating a fist-bump, "and move to the next guy."

Cliff Floyd said having celebrities visit the clubhouse is a byproduct of winning.

"I mean, if we were losing, he'd have come into town and his show would have been half about us last night," Floyd said.

And he probably would have made the mistake of calling them the "Devil" Rays too. Instead, Rock stuck to picking on rap music, Jude Law, and Chris Simms. But seriously, if it ever gets to the point where the real bandwagon jumping celebrities like Sylvester Stallone show up, then you'll know the Rays will have made it into the celebrity stratosphere.

Now that the Rays have the best record in baseball and just swept the Red Sox this week, everybody in the world is suddenly a Rays fan. There are actually other people besides Dick Vitale showing up at Rays games on a regular basis, and they aren't there to root for the other team. It's amazing.

Still, a sudden surge in popularity isn't always a good thing. The paparazzi start following you around everywhere, and before you know it, you're making out with Madonna while your wife is going Lenny Kravitz' way. Another downside to being popular? If you're Rays manager Joe Maddon, it's identity theft.

Maddon spent part of his morning Monday getting a new bank card after becoming a victim of identity theft.

"Somebody was charging gasoline in New York City on my debit card," Maddon said. "With the price of gas these days, I would have preferred they had gone to Tiffany's."

While police still haven't caught the perpetrator, I've decided to lend my excellent sleuthing skills to the case to help solve this caper, and put the thief behind bars. Going off of Joe's appearance, I'm guessing the culprit is one of the following three suspects: Buddy Holly, Rivers Cuomo, and Elvis Costello.

If you see any of these musicians, I advise you take proper precautions, for they are armed and extremely nerdy.

The Rays, fresh off their entertaining sweep of the Red Sox, are in full-on euphoria mode. The team is young and entertaining, the fan base is slowly buying in, and the millions of people who breathe baseball every day are still trying to figure out how a team with no payroll and no history of success is leading baseball's toughest division. The answer came to different people at different times -- Baseball Prospectus predicted it well before this season -- but Yankees GM Brian Cashman saw it last September:

"It's not going to be a situation where they add 10 wins next year and 10 more the year after that. It's not going to be slow. When it happens, it will happen quick. Now. That growing stuff is behind them now. It's going to come fast."

Cashman hit it on the head -- the Rays made tweaks, not giant changes, and flipped on a powerhouse of a team that was waiting to explode. Whether Tampa can maintain 2008's defensive prowess is yet to be seen, but the future is pretty clear. The Rays are not going away.

(HT: Baseball Musings)

While the Tampa Bay Rays have caught everybody by surprise this season (most expected them to improve in 2008, but nobody had them having the best record in baseball on July 2nd), one of the biggest surprises on the team has been the performance of closer Troy Percival. Percival had been out of baseball for a year and a half before joining the Cardinals bullpen last season, and signed with the Rays to be their closer this season.

Personally, I didn't think the 38-year old would be all that helpful to the Rays but it turns out that I'm an idiot, and Percival has been a big reason why the Rays are in first place. He already has 19 saves in 21 chances for Tampa this season, even though he missed a few weeks on the disabled list at the beginning of June. Well, it's going to be a while until he gets his next save, because he's making a return trip.

As expected, closer Troy Percival landed on the 15-day disabled list due to his left hamstring strain.

What was somewhat surprising was what the Rays did to take his place, calling up RHP Mitch Talbot from Triple-A Durham and planning to move RHP Jason Hammel into a more significant bullpen role.

Percival was on the DL earlier thanks to the same hamstring, and had to be removed from Monday's game (much to his chagrin) when it acted up on him again. Tampa is hoping that this time his two weeks off, combined with the All-Star break, will be enough for the hammy to fully heal.

The Rays will use a closer by committee in his absence, using Dan Wheeler, Trever Miller, Grant Balfour, and J.P. Howell as they see fit.

Hurry along now, people -- the bandwagon is almost full! Of course, it might not stay that way for long should the Rays stop winning (unlikely) or should the Cowbell Kid continue to beat a loud cowbell in the stands every night (seems likely). Here's the CBK wigging out on a Red Sox sign in the middle of a game.



And after the jump, an interview with the Cowbell Kid, who has been a fan since the beginning of "Ray's time". Pretty convenient language if you ask me.

If you've watched either of Tampa's wins against the Red Sox this week, you've noticed that there are an awful lot of Sox fans at the games. That's great for the atmosphere because instead of a soulless dome, the Trop actually has a buzz and some intensity, but they've brought some of the other elements of fandom along with them. From Awful Announcing, via Red Sox Monster, comes a fan who epitomizes grace in the face of defeat.
Has there been some kind of mandate that announcers have to ignore someone flipping the bird? The Fox guys did the same thing with Kerry Wood this weekend. I realize it's unfortunate for the broadcast to pick it up but it's not the end of the world. As a citizen and baseball fan, the pink hat riles me up much more.

If you tuned into last night's Red Sox-Rays game hoping to see a renewal of fisticuffs, you may have been disappointed. The teams acted more professional this time around, sorry Papelbon, while playing a taut one-run game worthy of their season-long battle for the top of the AL East.

Those who just can't live without confrontation got a little something to make them smile. Troy Percival, trying to close the game in the ninth pulled up lame backing up home plate which brought Joe Maddon out to replace his closer with the game on the line.

After the game Percival originally denied that he was trying to stay in the game, my lip reading skills picked up quite a few "Nos" coming out of his mouth though. Unless Maddon was telling him about A-Rod and Madonna, it seems like Percy wanted to stay in the contest. He finally came around, however.

"He did the right thing. I apologized to him immediately. I know better than to even act like that, but my frustration got the better of me right there."

The frustration has to be about the return of the leg injury that sent him to the disabled list earlier this season. The Rays need Percival to be right down the stretch, which should mean shutting him down through the All-Star break. Too much on the line to risk losing the closer for the season.

It appears that the Tampa Bay Rays won't have a chance to turn this season's strong play into the new stadium they'd like to build on St. Petersburg's waterfront. The team announced yesterday that they are no longer seeking a November referendum about public financing for the site. The news isn't totally bad, however.

The area has been hit hard by the woes in the real estate market and other economic downturns, which may well have resulted in the referendum's failure in November. The whole idea only came up seven months ago and a little more time, marketing and salesmanship may mean that the project can go forward in the future. That might mean moving into the stadium in 2013 instead of 2012 but that's worth avoiding an acrimonious process.

The team also announced that there will be a group of community officials studying several issues pertaining to the stadium, including alternative sites. That's important since non-waterfront sites don't require referendums, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which gives the opening to take public opinion out of the equation. Less cynically, further investigation creates more transparency and more of a sense that this isn't just a jailbreak to get a stadium built ASAP.